Tinopai To Port Albert, Northland

Continuing on with my Northland blogs from February, 2019. 

From Dargaville we headed south to our next destination, Tinopai, a small settlement at the bottom of the Hukatere Peninsula, a reasonably large finger of land that juts out into the mighty Kaipara Harbour.

The Tinopai Camp Ground is right one the edge of the harbour with fabulous views out over the water.

It was the perfect spot to spend a few days relaxing in the middle of a hot summer.

Powered sites are available at the top end of the camp beside the water too & near the facilities, which, like many classic kiwi campgrounds are pretty basic but adequate. 

Of course the harbour is tidal and the view doesn't look quiet so inviting when the tide is out. Except when I captured it late in the evening, the sky with a rosy hue, as the sun dipped below the horizon behind us.

My sister & husband- who we'd seen several times while travelling around Northland- drove across from Whangarei to spend the night in their tent beside us before we headed further south & back to the South Island. 

There's a small marina beside the campground with the usual collection of small boats & old launches; some well loved, others that had seen better days. I didn't have to go far to capture the stunning sunrises either, just to the back of the rig.

I wanted to take a sunrise photo of the Tinopai wharf which is about 2kms further down the road, I drove down to check it out...

And then picked the wrong morning to shoot it. Although I still captured the golden glow, I would have loved it had there been the cloud cover & colours of the sunrise up above in the mosaic. After an evening of great company, good food & fine wine I was a little slow in getting out the door in time to make it down to the wharf for that one. 

We stopped several times on our way down to Tinopai so I could add to my collection of country church photos. And this church was high on my list. 

The Parirau Zion Church is tucked down a lane off the main road. Since these photos were taken there is now a Parirau Church Restoration Committee who are fundraising to restore the church to it's former glory. The Zion Church was the the first permanent Anglican Church to be erected in the Parirau settlement in 1889. It replaced an earlier nikau (native palm) building and became the place of worship for the local Ratana congregation in the 1920s. 

Other churches (and a friendly mule) I captured during our journey down to Tinopai and around to Port Albert are below. Clockwise from top left are; the 1866-67 Matakohe Pioneer Church across the road from the Kauri Museum, St Michael on the Hill (1845) at Hukatere,  All Saints Church (1883) at Mititai, the Paparoa Community Church. And the final one is the Coates Memorial Church at Matakohe, opened in 1950 and the only church in NZ to be dedicated to a NZ politician; Joseph Gordon Coates (1878-1943) was a member of the House of Representatives for 32 years & Prime Minister from 1925-1928.

On our way to our next overnight camp at Port Albert we stopped at The Kauri Museum in Matakohe. 

We enjoyed our visit & had a good look through the many rooms & displays but felt we didn't quite do the visit justice. There were just so many rooms and nooks & crannies to explore with a lot of written information to take in too. It was another very hot summer's day and we were keen to get back on the road and to our next destination in the comfort of our air conditioned ute. This would be a great place to explore on a cold or wet day.

Our next stop was a freedom camping site at the end of the road at Port Albert, another settlement on the edge of the Kaipara Harbour but this time on the south side. We ignored our GPS which kept telling us to turn around and head further south & turn off the main highway at Wellsford. Instead we turned off at Te Hana and wove our way through some dodgy back country roads to Port Albert. 

The freedom camping area is right beside the harbour with another long wharf jutting out into the water.

But no marina this time just a handful of lovely old yachts & fishing boats anchored out in the main channel.

One of the reasons for stopping here was so I didn't have to cook dinner! No seriously I had read great reviews for the fish 'n chip takeaways from the Port Albert General Store, just up the road from the campsite. I can happily report that they were indeed excellent fish 'n chips. I wandered up the road to get them and then we sat outside under the awning eating them in the warm evening air as the sun went down. 

As you can see it was indeed a very hot day, and especially so with no breeze to speak of.

Locals came down to the harbour to fish & swim as the sun sunk below the horizon and temperature dropped a little. 

The next morning dawned clear and still with just a hint of mist rising from the water. It was going to be another hot summer's day.

An Eclectic Mix- Wellington

Real-time

Pauatahanui Boat Sheds

From Mangatainoka we headed west over the Tararua Range via the Pahiatua Track, into the Manawatu and south to Wellington & the Plimmerton NZMCA Park...

...where, with rain and gale force winds forecast, we tucked ourselves into a corner hoping for a little bit of shelter and also to protect our slide-out from the southerly winds. Others also had the same idea although I think they may not had any TV reception due to the boundary building. The sun also didn't reach them until early afternoon and then only for a short time before it disappeared over the hills behind the park. 

We had a couple of places to visit in Wellington and friends to catch up with so we weren't in any hurry to board the ferry and cross over to the South Island. Which was just as well, what with the weather forecast & a holiday weekend coming up. It was time to do a little exploring.

The first place we visited was the Southward Car Museum at Paraparaumu, 30kms back up the highway. After a casual conversation with Dad when we were in Hawkes Bay, there was one particular item I wanted to see.

Southwatd Car Museum- don't you love the sign.

And here it is. This is Len Southward's speed boat 'Redhead', the first boat in Australasia to exceed 100mph on water, which he did on 22 Feb, 1953 across the Wellington Harbour. Later that year while attending a boat regatta after-function in Wellington, my father (aged 17) was invited with two others to take a ride in the boat with Len.....across the harbour at 100mph! Very cool eh? 

Here's the information and specs on 'Redhead', click on the photo to enlarge.

Once we had finished looking at 'Redhead' and watching the film clips of Len and the boat racing across the harbour, we checked out the rest of the museum's collection...

...which included a number of planes suspended from the ceiling, including this ex RNZAF de Havilland Vampire jet fighter.

We've visited a number of vehicle museums around the country and also attended various events where vintage vehicles are paraded including Napier's Art Deco, the Arrowtown Autumn Festival, the Whangamata Beach Hop and Southland's Crank Up amongst others and it never fails to amaze me how many vintage vehicles there are in this country and how well they are looked after. 

And because I already have hundreds of photos of very shiny vintage vehicles I decided to take photos of the more unusual cars at the Southward Museum. Problem was there were so many, including this 1920 Dodge Coupe 'Copper Car'.

And look at all these weird and wonderful creations! Rather than include photos of the information sheets for each vehicle, I've uploaded all my Southward Museum photos to a Flickr Album, click on this link to check them out.

I had to include this photo purely for sentimental reasons. After my sister & I got our licenses at 15, Mum & Dad bought us a car (living on the farm we used it to get to school, after school jobs, running errands & ferrying friends about). I really wanted a cool Ford Anglia (#2 car in the lineup) so was very disappointed when we only got a blue Ford Prefect (#1). Once we had our own money, my sister bought a Ford Escort (#3) and I bought a Ford Cortina (#4). Those were the days....

I'm sure the young lady who was polishing the cars while listening to her music thought I was taking a photo of her. I talked to her twice (but she didn't hear) and then I waited for so long to see if she would move on down the line but she just kept on polishing and polishing the first four cars.

Tony & Sue Collins 1926 Chevrolet 'Motorhome'- 3-1/2 years, 20,000 miles around the world

We enjoyed the museum, both reminiscing as we came across cars we were familiar with and we were pleased that we visited but we were both of the opinion that the best vehicle museum by far in the country is the Bill Richardson Transport Museum in Invercargill.

We have passed through Wellington many times as we've travelled up and down the country but have never stopped longer than a day or two and that has usually been at Evans Bay near the city centre. Now that we were parked up at Plimmerton I wanted to check out the Pauatahanui boat sheds, something I had wanted to photograph for a long time. 

It was a pleasant surprise to find out that they were only a few kilometres down the road. It wasn't pleasant that the weather packed up and I never got a chance to shoot the reflections and an early morning sunrise over the Pauatahanui Inlet though. I also didn't manage to capture the boat sheds at Titahi Bay, another perfect subject. 

I was quite excited to find a painting of Sam Hunt, his dog and one of his poems. I thought that this might have been his boat shed but on further research I found out that he owned Number 5, and darn it, I didn't take a photo of that particular shed! I'll just have to come back again. And on a sunny day.

We did manage to have one day out of the box, one of those days when Wellington shines with no wind, blue skies and warm sunshine. And as luck would have it, it was the day we decided to catch the train into the city. The Plimmerton Railway Station is just a short distance across the sports field next to the NZMCA Park. 

Luckily we decided to head into the city on the Friday (not only because of the weather), it wasn't until later we saw a sign saying that the trains wouldn't be running over Queens Birthday Weekend due to maintenance.

From the Wellington train station we walked along the waterfront towards Te Papa (Museum of New Zealand)

Photos clockwise- 1) Sealion' has an interesting paint job; hundreds of penguins and a few dozen sealions peering out at people passing by 2) Colourful Public Piano 3) Love Locks- Frank Kitts Lagoon Footbridge 4) Circa Theatre  5) Te Papa 6) Kapa Haka pedestrian lights

I had been disappointed that we didn't make it to see Peter Jackson's Great War Exhibition before it closed so when I heard that Te Papa & Weta Workshops' Gallipoli: The Scale Of Our War Exhibition had been extended I was keen to visit before it too closed (I've since found out that it won't close before ANZAC Day, 2022 at the earliest).

Te Papa- Museum of New Zealand

There was no missing where the exhibition was once we got inside.

No flash photography was allowed inside the exhibition and with it being quite dark and gloomy to suit the solemn atmosphere it would have been hard to photograph many of the displays anyway. I did manage to take photos of the life-like figures by winding my settings out to the max though.

Te Papa, working with Weta Workshops (Lord of the Rings fame), developed 'Gallipoli' into an interesting but sobering journey through the eight- month WW1 Gallipoli campaign in which 2,779 New Zealanders lost their lives.

Weta Workshop spent 24,000 hours of labour on the project, creating eight hyper-realistic (a genre of sculpture) human figures. The exhibition tells the story through the eyes and words of eight ordinary New Zealanders who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Each is captured frozen in a moment of time on a monumental scale – 2.4 times human size. The bowl under the last figure's feet is full of poppies that have added as people leave the exhibition. Visitors are invited to make a poppy up and write names on them to remember lost relatives or just the war itself.

It is truly an amazing exhibition, so well researched and displayed with 3-D maps and projections, miniatures, models, dioramas, and a range of interactive experiences that bring New Zealand’s Gallipoli story to life.

Sadly it is so realistic and very distressing to read about some of the experiences, that some people will find they may not be able to follow it through to the end- David included. Oh, the horrors of war.

Afterwards we took some time out to regather our thoughts and bring us back into the 21st century by visiting the revamped (since our last visit) Nature Zone exhibition which is on the same floor. I was pleased to see that the Colossal Squid (the only one in the world on display) has been returned for permanent viewing.

From Plimmerton we took a drive around the Pauatahanui Inlet stopping to get a photo of the beautiful historic St Alban's Church (of course) which was built in 1898...

...before blowing away the cobweds on the Pauatahanui Wetlands track which was just across the road. We walked right to the end visiting the two bird hides but of course at this time of the year there's not much to see on the ponds other than the usual ducks.

Although on the way home we did find a small flock of Royal Spoonbills/Kotuku Ngutupapa sheltering from the freezing cold wind and heavy rain that had begun to fall. Rain that didn't stop for a few days and overflowed the NZMCA Park's boundary stream which flooded the sports field next door.

Once the weather cleared and before the next winter low was due, we shifted 20kms over to the Petone Workingmens Club to catch up with friends on that side of the city. The Petone Club is an NZMCA CAP (costs apply parking), the cost is $10 per van per night and  power is available at no extra cost but it's first in first served; the caravan & bus in the bottom photo are on power.

Larger rigs need to come in the 'Out' gate, keeping an eye out for departing vehicles of course, as they won't get around the Club's building beside the 'In' gate. Also be aware if you are leaving to catch an early ferry sailing the 'Out' gate will be closed & locked. Luckily we were able to squeeze around the building and exit through the open 'In' gate because the carpark was nearly empty.

We had a good catch-up with our friends (fellow 5th-wheelers) and afterwards a lovely meal in the club with them (you don't need to be members, you just have to sign in at reception). 

With a day spare before we were due to cross Cook Strait, I went for a drive over to Wainuiomata. On the way back I stopped at the lookout overlooking Petone. Somes Island and the Wellington harbour are on the left.